I'm writing this in a Beatle wig, Lennon shades, 'Love' badge, Rubber Soul/Revolver/Byrds period suit and purple cravat. In fact, I'm just taking off the wig because I'm too hot. I'm too hot for my wig, too hot for my wig.
Two reasons. (1) It's my daughter's 21 st party in Brighton tomorrow and there's a sixties theme and (2) I bought the stuff in Nottingham yesterday where I did a Tales Out Of School poetry reading at the Rose of England pub on Mansfield Road. It was the first gig I've done since the Fringe and the audience (one of those uniquely and gloriously knot-free NATE poetry-ins) made me feel like the Beatles honed and handsome and just back from Hamburg for a homecoming at the Cavern.
I concentrated on the funny side of school for most of it and boy did they laugh - I had a feeling they just might have been there, ie painted into a school corner with a janitor hitting them on the funny bone until it hurt. Enduring exams, unsuitable peripatetic music teachers, sentence completion exercises, over-zealous deputy heads, hysterical drama teachers with Welsh accents, Mr Hasbeen, Evans the Dap and a Head who was so careful not to offend anyone in his 'Act of Worship' that he disappeared long way up his own backside: oh yes, we laughed away the frets and fumes. Then for the final 10-15 minutes, I previewed the novel (out next week) with two extracts - a Christmas sixth form love story that never gets where it ought to and then revisited the same girl (and the same love story) thirty years on, now a teacher. I know from experience how good it is as an adult to have a story read to me (even kids don't get enough of this now and adults almost never) and this seemed to provide the necessary engagement. It reminded me of how my daughter used to settle and go pleasantly pensive when I read to her at bedtime. For my part, having recently read the whole novel five times on screen (330 pages!) for the 'final' proofs, it was great to get my characters and storyline back , paradoxically, bygiving it to this wonderful audience. Lots of people said very nice things afterwards and generally made me feel like a Beatle. Thank you Nottingham - and particualrly thank you to Jane (and Stuart) who organised it and got a decent audience out and into the city for poetry on a Wednesday night towards the end of a hard term. And thank you finally to Rosie who did an introductory reading of poems. She is a genuine community poet - a very moving and engaging one who shares every word of it from deep - poetry written from experiences working with prisoners commissioned by a bus company, one poem per route (That would be one poem where I live; in Nottingham it's a book's worth). Funny too. This is where poetry should be - sent back into the community to do its divine work. A great evening - and it was still great at 3 am looking at this wonderful city through red wine tinted spectacles.
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